


Unavoidable

by Cynder713



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Espionage, Identity Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-23 23:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16628906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynder713/pseuds/Cynder713
Summary: Elizabeth straightened up and met eyes with Philip, who was doing the same having just finished with the third agent. They started to head towards one another when the sound of a gun cocking came from the door.A fourth agent stood there, pistol held in outstretched arms.It was Stan Beeman.





	Unavoidable

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always been obsessed with identity reveals, especially on shows like this one with such good characterization. I wrote this way before the final season aired and obviously it can’t hold a candle to that fucking amazing scene in the finale, but it was a lot of fun to write and hopefully will be fun to read too! Unbeta-ed.

The warehouse looked abandoned from the outside. No lights shone from within, there was no obvious signage or branding on the walls; if it weren’t for the shiny new locks barring all the entrances there would be no sign of its true purpose.

Philip and Elizabeth walked swiftly to the door furthest away from the road. They had forgone wearing any wigs or fake mustaches, opting instead for covering their hair with dark skull caps.

Elizabeth knelt at the door, pulling out her lock picking kit, while Philip stood watch. Thirty seconds later they were inside.

While the outside of the warehouse looked unassuming, the interior was sleek and new. It housed several small offices and rooms filled with filing cabinets. An FBI offsite.

The plans they were after were kept in one of the offices on the upper level. Usually, this place was crawling with feds, or at the very least had a small detail posted to keep an eye on things, but the Centre had received intel that tonight was to be uncharacteristically quiet. It was a small window that would close for good in a few hours, so the Jennings had been called in at relatively short notice to take advantage.

Elizabeth motioned for Philip to go on ahead while she scouted out the area surrounding the stairs leading to the target office. He nodded and headed up the stairs to peek through the window on the door. Elizabeth gave the lower level a brief once-over, but they didn’t have time to be more thorough. She followed Philip into the office.

It looked like any other old office in the country; cubicles, uncomfortable desk chairs, filing cabinets, slightly outdated computer systems. If it weren't for the deliberately shabby exterior of the building it would be easy to mistake the place for some insignificant accounting office, or a law firm, a travel agency. As it were, Philip walked down the rows, scanning each cabinet for identifying markers, settling on one about two thirds of the way down. Elizabeth posted herself at the door, one hand on the gun in her jacket pocket. Philip opened the middle draw and rifled through the files, quickly pulling one out. He took photos of the relevant papers and was just putting the file back when Elizabeth heard a sound.

The sound of one of the warehouse doors opening.

This wasn’t an ideal position to be in. She was standing by the room’s only exit, and even then the door was in full view of two of the warehouse’s entrances. She risked a glance out the office door’s window to see which entrance it was – not the one they’d come through, thankfully, or the FBI would’ve been tipped off already by the lack of a padlock - then ran over to her husband.

She got his attention, motioned towards the door. He nodded, and they both ducked behind desks at the back of the room.

They breathed into the silence for what felt like hours before the office door opened. Three men filed into the room, chatting jovially amongst themselves. Elizabeth ducked her head out from behind the leg of the desk. She spotted shoulder holsters on each of the men, but from the cursory glance she’d gotten they were all full and buckled. If it came down to it, they could take them all out without any of them even getting their guns up. She signaled as much to Philip, who nodded and signaled back. He pointed towards where the agents were, then at the walkway between himself and Elizabeth: If the FBI detail made it this far down the row, they would take them out.

They listened in tense silence as the three men made their way leisurely through the office.

As Elizabeth counted down the seconds to when they would be forced to make a move, she silently cursed whoever their informant on this mission was. This may be only a skeleton crew of FBI agents, but still they had been told no one would be here at all.

The instant the tip of a brown shoe appeared between the desks, they struck.

Elizabeth leapt up in front of the first agent and boxed his ears, disorienting him. She hooked her foot behind his ankle and tripped him over, onto the second man down the row. While they were distracted, Philip snuck around the back of the desk and came up behind the third man, locking his arms around the guy’s throat. He held him back and slowly strangled him as Elizabeth took care of the other two.

She was doing her best to avoid firing her gun, since they couldn’t be sure if there were any more agents outside the warehouse, or even just some passing by do-gooders who would call the cops. The first agent was still badly stunned so she turned her attention onto the second. He had toppled over when the first man fell on him and was struggling to get at his gun. Elizabeth grabbed his hand and snapped it back on itself, breaking his wrist, then snatched the gun out of his holster. She brought it down hard on his nose and he went limp. She turned to do the same to the first man but he had recovered enough to scoot backwards, out of her reach. For now.

He was still holding his head at an odd angle, struggling to get his bearings even as he got his gun out. Elizabeth took all this in in seconds and made a decision. She threw her stolen gun at him, taking advantage of his automatic flinch to run forwards and get behind him.

He was still kneeling so she was going to go for a choke-hold, but even as she reached around his head she saw that he’d finally managed to remove his gun from its holster. There was no time to choke him out.

Smoothly changing track, she pushed him down with a knee to the middle of his back and wrapped her right arm down around his jaw, grabbing onto his chin with that hand, and grabbed the top of his head with her left.

With enormous effort, she twisted his head anti-clockwise, wrenching his chin up as she did. He strained against her for seconds before she felt something crack and he tumbled to the ground.

Breathing heavily, Elizabeth straightened up and met eyes with Philip, who was doing the same having just finished with the third agent. They had just started to head towards one another when the sound of a gun cocking came from the door.

A fourth agent stood there, pistol held in outstretched arms, vacillating between aiming at Philip or Elizabeth.

It was Stan Beeman.

 

* * *

 

 

Elizabeth had put some thought into what would happen if Stan ever found out about them. For all he was a big tough FBI agent, his fondness of Philip probably would have gotten them at least a bit of leniency. But in those scenarios he either put together their identities through outside clues or found something incriminating at the house. The reality was going to be a lot harder to swallow.

Probably hard to come back from witnessing his two favorite neighbors kill three FBI agents.

Philip had obviously been thinking along similar lines.

“Stan, you can put the gun down, and we’ll explain,” he said.

“Stay right the fuck there.” Stan aimed at Philip, who held his palms up placatingly.

“Yeah, sure thing, we’re gonna do what you say, alright, Stan?”

“Just shut up, ok? I don’t trust a goddamn word that comes out of your mouth right now.”

Still aiming at Philip, Stan dragged his free hand down his face, rubbing his eyes with the heel. Elizabeth considered using this lapse to make a move, but caught Philip’s slight head shake. He was gonna try and talk Stan down. Ok, she’d sit back and see how this played out.

Stan, having somewhat composed himself, spoke.

“What are your names.” It was a demand, not a question.

“I’m Philip Jennings, and she’s Elizabeth Jennings. Those _are_ our names, Stan.”

Stan was already shaking his head. “If you’re just gonna bullshit me I’ll take you back to the bureau and one of our specialists can talk to you. But fine, let’s try a different question. Who do you work for?”

Philip’s mouth worked, but he stayed silent. Elizabeth knew what he was thinking. If Stan heard those three letters, what were the chances of him ever listening to anything Philip had to say? Well, she saw one possible solution, since there wasn’t really any lie that would be convincing, except the ones that made them look worse. She’d been raising two kids for over a decade, so she knew that sometimes there was value in making yourself the villain.

“We’re KGB.”

Stan whipped his head around to stare at her.

“A part of directorate S. My real name is Nadezhda.”

Stan blinked slowly. “You’re… Russian spies?”

Elizabeth considered replying with ‘da’, but felt that would be pushing things. “Yes.”

Stan looked over at Philip.

“She’s telling the truth. My real name,” Philip put on a great show of reluctance, “...is Mikhail. I was recruited into the KGB when I was seventeen.”

Recruited. That was a good word to use. Elizabeth could see Stan trying to stay impartial, but he was clearly taken aback by Philip’s confession.

“So this whole time…”

“Oh come on, Stan, you suspected us the first time you met us. You broke into our garage, remember?” Not that she’d been there for it.

“You knew about that.”

“Yeah.”

“I… Christ, I didn’t actually believe it! It’s like when you hear a noise at night and you know it isn’t a burglar but you can’t get back to sleep until you check. Maybe if you’d moved in after me, I could’ve believed you were placed there to get close to me.”

Philip laughed. “Believe me, we were as shocked then as you are now to find out an FBI agent had moved in across from us. You don’t think we were on high alert ever since then? Not exactly what I'd call job security.”

That time Stan actually had to stop himself from smiling. He made a concerted effort to look serious.

“I don’t think I ever really believed directorate S was this advanced. Your accents…”

“Whatever training you had at Quantico? Doesn’t hold a candle to what we went through in Moscow.” Philip quipped.

Stan was still struggling with the concept, Elizabeth could tell.

“У вас были уроки? Бюро бы его организовало. Теперь легче верить?” *

If she’d thought Stan looked shocked to see them here, that had nothing on his expression now.

Philip had looked at her with something close to surprise on his face, but now he kept his expression entirely closed off. Elizabeth hoped he didn’t scare Stan away; this would only work if they leaned on the rapport the two men had with each other. And kept Stan from thinking about the corpses at their feet.

Philip, clearly on the same wavelength, spoke up.

“We work for our government, Stan. The same as you. We just want to try and make the world safer.”

It was the same line they’d used on Paige. Elizabeth didn’t expect it to work so well here.

Stan frowned, but he didn’t straighten his gun from where it had started to droop.

“Make the world safer? What, by breaking into FBI off-sites and killing its agents?”

“We’re information gatherers, Stan. We didn’t want to hurt anyone, but… the job has its risks. You know that as well as I do.”

“But to come to this country under false pretenses, illegally, with less than noble intentions... You can see how I might have a hard time accepting that.”

“Not every part of government work can be squeaky clean, Stan. Your guys have done things just as bad as ours have.”

“Your government was the one to break first and develop chemical warfare,” Elizabeth added.

A shadow passed over Stan’s face, too quick to identify.

“Look, Stan, there’s no point in trading stories like this. We’re not here to hurt you, we didn't come here to do anything but get information that could help our people save lives back home.” Philip sounded so sincere. Stan let his gun drop another inch or so, his attention now back on Philip entirely.

“So what do you suggest I do now?” Stan asked. It was sarcastic, or at least he was trying for sarcasm, but underneath it was the sense that Stan really did want to find a way out of this.

Philip latched onto that. He started out slow.

“...If you were the one to take us in, it could improve our chances of getting through this alive.”

Stan blinked. “You want me to arrest you?”

“I don’t _want_ you to arrest me, but I don’t really see any other way out of this, do you?” Hook, line, meet…

“You could defect.”

Philip narrowed his eyes. “After what happened here? There’s no guarantee your government would take us.”

Stan got a hold of the thread of an idea and started pulling. “If you came in with me and were completely upfront about everything they would listen, I could make sure of that.”

Philip put on a good show of seriously considering it. Not, Elizabeth supposed, that he would have to do that much acting. This scenario had probably occurred to him already.

Stan shot a quick glance towards Elizabeth, who schooled her expression into an appropriately troubled and considering one. He only looked her way for a moment before turning back to Philip.

Philip held one hand out and looked Stan in the eye for a long moment before speaking.

“You would have to be able to guarantee that our kids won't be affected by any of this. _Any of this,_ ” he repeated.

Stan actually looked affronted.

“Of _course_ , I- I would never want to do anything to hurt them. Philip,” he said seriously, “You have my word.”

Philip lowered his hand. He tapped a staccato rhythm on his hip for a moment.

“OK then.”

He looked over at Elizabeth. She nodded.

“Don't worry, I'm actually pretty good at my job. Neither of you are gonna come to any harm,” Stan joked. “This is the right thing to do.”

He lowered his gun.

Philip couldn't fully suppress the sad expression that took over his face.

“I'm sorry, Stan.”

Stan started to frown in confusion. “What-”

Elizabeth shot him.

 

* * *

 

 

They drove home in silence.

In fact, Philip hadn’t said a word to her since she shot Stan. They had dragged all the bodies from the warehouse and disposed of them as quickly as possible, but there were more than they usually needed to deal with at one time. It had taken all night.

Now they pulled back into the garage just as dawn was breaking.

Elizabeth couldn't tell if her husband was angry, which was cause for concern in itself.

Philip killed the engine and sat facing forwards, letting his hands fall loosely on his knees.

“So that warehouse is shot as far as we’re concerned. They’re gonna have 24 hour details on that place for the next six months now.”

“Right.” Elizabeth nodded.

Philip got out of the car and headed into the basement. She followed him, closing the door behind them.

“I’m sorry that it had to happen that way-”

“You don’t have to apologize.” He smiled emptily and shook his head.

“Oh.” Elizabeth blinked, a little wrong footed by his mild response. “Honestly, I thought you’d need to yell at me or something, get this out of your system. Or at least take some more time to… work through it.”

Philip laughed again, exasperated this time. “Count on you to have categorized my response, planned for it, even. No,” he said. “I’ve had lots of time to ‘work through it’. I knew, the second you spoke Russian in front of him, he wasn’t getting out of there alive.”

Elizabeth looked down at the floor for a moment. She shook her hair out and turned to face the pile of washing that was growing on top of the dryer.

“Well then. I'm glad we’re on the same page.”

She didn't need to see Philip roll his eyes. But she heard him sigh. “Sure.”

He left her to her folding.

**Author's Note:**

> *Did you have lessons? The bureau would organize it. Now it's easier to believe?


End file.
